istariafandomcom-20200215-history
User talk:Kindragon
Hi, welcome to Istaria Wiki! Thanks for your edit to the New Trismus page. Please leave a message on my talk page if I can help with anything! -- StalePopcorn (Talk) 17:04, 19 July 2009 Hi there. Have your edits to the vault upgrade quests been like that on purpose? You removed a lot of information on some of them and I don't quite see the reasoning behind that - but I dont want to undo either without talking about it first. Greetings. --LinoRanta 18:51, 30 July 2009 (UTC) I'm afraid I don't see what major changes I've made to those quests. I've not removed much, if any, information. What information was removed that you feel should remain in the quests? Kindragon 18:55, 30 July 2009 (UTC) Well, first you removed location information and changed NPC back to Vaultkeeper for quests that - unless something was changed in the game since I updated those pages - you cannot get from just any vaultkeeper. Yes, there might be more than one, but if thats the case we should chose one for the quest macro at top and name the others in either the description section or the tasks section of the page. Simply stating "vaultkeeper" will lead to people going to eg NT, not being able to get the quest and then thinking the wiki is outdated/stupid/whatever. (IOW: the port and npc names where there for a reason and either I missed a change in the game or the reason still exists) Second, I am not sure removing the description section heading makes the page more readable. headlines are important for "scanning" the page. The clear separation of quest pages into the sections "quick summary", description, requirements (which you also removed), tasks and rewards makes those pages very comfortable to read and to skim over. You also removed the requirements section. I know the info is in the summary from the quest macro. But it's easier to put a short info in there and be a bit less brief in the section below. Additionally, the summary says "Level range", which is ok, but its not the same as "requirements". This might not seem a big issue on the vault upgrades, but other quests have more requirements and having a consistant layout for all quest pages is a major factor in usability. --LinoRanta 19:17, 30 July 2009 (UTC) All NPC vaultkeepers offer the quests for the vault upgrades. Limiting it to one vaultkeeper is worse than allowing players to knwo that any vaultkeeper offers the quest. Redundant information is redundant. It's also harder to update, which is why the Quest Template has been established. This allows one to update the formats for quests from a single point and not have to update all other quests in order to change the formatting. By making each page require manually intervention, any changes to the quest formats requires multiple changes to each individual page instead of the single section or template. Level Range is more descriptive of the process for what levels are required for a quest. If it's just a minimum level then one does not add a maxlevel requirement and the Quest Template will add a plus '+' to indicate it's a minimum level to get the quest. If you think "Level Range" is too vague and may make people think that it's jsut talking about a "recommended" level range, then we can discuss this on the Template:Quest discussion forum. Kindragon 19:25, 30 July 2009 (UTC) No, not all vaultkeepers provide all of the quests of this line. I got my first upgrade quest in New Trismus. I just checked vaultkeepers in Aughundell and New Trismus and while I can get the upgrade IV in aug. I can NOT get it in NT. So simply writing vaultkeeper does not reflect the reality. Sorry. So either we end up with several names and locations in the template (which means the order of the "arguments" becomes important) or we put one in the template and list the others in the "steps" section (which really should list the inital talk-to-npc, otherwise people might try to go straight to the second step because they didn't notice the npc/location in the summary; this is a problem for all quests, not just the vault ones). I guess I can live with the requirements section gone, provided all quest requirements in the game so far can be expressed using the template - it certainly does make the pages harder to scan though. About the redudancy argument: Yes, from a contributors view it's bad - from a users point of view it is not (necessarily) bad. And while contributors are important, a wiki (like any other website) is for the users/readers, their needs and comfort should have the highest priority in every descision. --LinoRanta 19:58, 30 July 2009 (UTC) Why put names of vaultkeepers that give the quest in the "steps" section and only one of the questgivers in the main section? Why not have each of the known questgivers in the npc section separated by commas? If we can find which questgivers are associated with each 'level' of the vault upgrades, then we can add all of the questgivers and ports to the quest template. I'm confused about your comments about the quest template. Of course we will only put the initial questgiver(s) in the template. Other characters involved in the quest but not starting the quest are normally in the steps as they are currently. Redundancy is also bad from a user's perspective. Having overloaded information or mentioning the location of every character every time their name is stated overloads people with too much to read through. Having the information in a signle easy to reach location son tehy knwo where to go for the details, is better in my opinion. Having pages inconsistent because multiple people are making pages under their own design leads to more confusion and less usabiltiy. Kindragon 20:19, 30 July 2009 (UTC) Allow me to add my two cents worth - the goal is to provide accurate information at all times. Nothing more frustrating than finding info on a wiki, trying to complete the steps, and then realising they are wrong :) Hence the changes to the quest template are to try and maintain accuracy for all pages by including NPCs, as well as making it flexible. I'll put my hand up to take the blame for the original semantic templates not being very flexible :) Vault upgrades IMHO are somewhat bugged, as Lino mentions with not being able to get the quest upgrade from NT vaultie and in theory they should be available from all vaulties. In these situations it is best to put in individual names of NPCs that provide the quest, as then their quests will appear on the NPC pages quest list. It may even be more appropriate to include all NPC names regardless. It will be a larger list, but it will also mean that the quests appear on not only the NPC pages (via semantic query on NPCs), but also on the city/town pages (via semantic query on NPCs and their location). This will provide access to quest info from not only the quest pages themselves, but also from the NPC and city/location pages too. Templates won't solve 100% of the cases, and in these situations it is better to add additional information in the page itself as text. While this isn't a perfect solution, it is IMHO better than trying to create an uber-template to solve everything. The changes to the quest template however I think are of value, because some quests can be supplied by multiple NPCs which will then be included in semantic lists, and the level range is important because that's generally how people try and find quests - "I am a level 16 WAR, what quests are available to me?" BTW very positive discussion folks, nice work. Happy to answer any other questions/queries that you have. StalePopcorn 23:20, 30 July 2009 (UTC)